Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Need more stress in your life? Join WordPress.com

Like many of you PR students out there, I'm also new to this phenomenon of blogging. My Social Applications partner was more than convinced that WordPress.com is the blogging way! It initially appealed to me because of it's aesthetic appearance, it looked clean, fresh and professional. Appearance is vital in the public relations industry since it should facilitate communication without distracting.

Unfortunately, WordPress and I were no match made in heaven.

Allow me to walk you through my experience: "Another account to setup?" (not too pleased)...few clicks later..."Oh, no! I was supposed to click Yes!"...(determined to start again)...some more clicks later... "Can't delete my account?" All of a sudden I started speaking Italian.. "FORGETTABOUTIT!"

I couldn't come to terms with this application. It was not as easy as it claimed to be after all. With so many viable options these days it's okay to prefer one application over another. (Blogger- 1, WordPress- 0)

Prior to my experience, I would have introduced WordPress as follows: "WordPress is a free hosting service that offers an easy way to deploy a Wordpress blog on-line, first appearing in 2003. Thanks to the co-founders Matt Mullenwag and Mike Little. The name "WordPress" was suggested by Christine Selleck, Mullenwags friend (clearly someone wanted in on funds). In 2009, WordPress won the best Source CMS Award (no, they weren't the only ones running). Since the win, there have been 202 million noted websites using this application." As mentioned earlier, the aesthetic appearance to blog presentation is almost as important as the information itself. If your background colour overpowers your font, the reader will lose focus- even if you were writing out the directions to the fountain of youth.

Who else isn't pleased? Nope, Al Gore is on my side. His WP blog on Climate Crisis got hacked into back in 2008.

According to Google, there are over ten pages of how to hack into WordPress. If you would like, you can also check out youtube, there you can find at least half a dozen of different ways to compromise WP blogs.
How to Hack a WordPress Forum:




For WordPress, security has been their greatest vulnerability for quite a while now. Some critics blame it on their constant upgrading of the system. This allows for cracks to remain that are then overlooked by the system and yet hunted for by hackers. Don't you find that security of a blogging application is important? You share key ideas on there, personal information, and it could easily be jeopardized by some hooligan who decides to make you look like a porn star over night. Of course at the end of the day, you can chose whichever application suits you. This one, I didn`t fancy so much. No need to cry over spilt milk- there are plenty of other men.. I mean applications out there that will suit your needs. Best of luck and may the best blogging application win!

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For those that enjoy using wordpress.com, have a look at my partner Caterina's blog, it worked for her so who knows maybe it'll work for you!